Going Back
by DerringerMeryl87
Summary: After 8 years Sarah who doesnt remember anything and her brother Toby are taken back to the Goblin kingdom when Jareth needs their help. Rated T in case of later chapters. JS!
1. Prologue

Prologue

Hoggle looked around the room, watching the charm Jareth had set cause all of the debris from the party earlier to clean itself. In a little while there would be no evidence any of the events of the night before had even happened.The sun was coming up, Hoggle reminded Jareth, bringing him out of his reverie. "We should go, Jareth. She'll wake up soon, and after we worked so hard to keep her awake until the memory charm had been taken, it would seem a shame."

"I know," said Jareth sadly. "You didn't want to let her forget, did you Hoggle?"

"Of course not!" Hoggle told his king almost angrily. "But the Law says we must, and even you can't break the Law."

"She looks so beautiful sleeping there," Jareth went on lamenting. "Look at how slowly she breathes. If I hadn't been watching her all this time, I might not even see it. She's like a doll, a perfect porcelain doll."

"Sir, you must stop this. You always were the one for drama! The girl must forget and be forgotten and that is that!" Hoggle told him sternly, real anger in his voice now. But there were tears streaming silently down his face, and those who knew him would have heard the tremble in his sterness and anger caused by the quivering in his lips. Sarah's dark hair lay smoothly on the pillow, framing her face down to her shoulders. The blackness of it made her fair and precious skin stand out even more. Like the moon in the night.

"What shall I do now Hoggle?" came Jareth's voice beside him. "I hadn't ever planned on failure."

"Forget about her." Hoggle tried to wipe the emotion from his voice. "Find another girl. It's all you can do."

Jareth nodded his head slightly and closed his eyes. Kings did not cry, he reminded himself silently. He opened his eyes to look down at Sarah again. The rising sun was caressing her eye lashes. Still as death, she lay there with eye lashes like sun beams. Before Jareth knew what he was doing, he swooped down on her. He kissed her lightly, his lips brushing her forehead as softly as feathers. Before he had fully straightened, he was out the window with nothing to show his presence at all, save the woosh of wings, and the feathers littering her bedside.

Hoggl lingered a moment or two longer, picking up the white feathers scattered around the bedroom. This early in the forgetting process, even things as small as a feather might trigger her remembrance. It simply wasn't allowed. He looked around the room again, checking to see that nothing had been missed. It was empty, but for the still form on the bed who wouldn't remember any of her new friends tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"Sarah!" her step mom called up the stairs, "Are you sure you will be alright with just you and Toby?"

Sarah rolled her eyes, but she knew by now that the woman really wasn't all that cold-hearted. She just wasn't sure how to treat the child of her husband. But after 10 years they got along fairly well. "Yes, Anne. We will do fine. You and Dad will only be on the trip for a week, besides, I'm 24 now. I live on my own anyway, and I've been taking care of Toby since I was 16. We'll be fine!"

"Well, alright. Your father and I are about to leave then," Anne told her, though she looked as though she still had misgivings about leaving them for this trip.

"Bye Dad!" Sarah had walked her stepmother down the stairs so that she could tell her father goodbye and assuage the misgivings that all parents seemed to have about going on trips.

Sarah checked on Toby, who was playing his video games so intently she wondered if he even knew their parents were gone. "Of course I know!" he told her, "I just also know that in this part our hero confronts the evil king!"

"Great," she told him, trying hard to sound enthused about this, and at the same time wondering if she should. She and Toby had always been close, but she wasn't really able to follow the complex, fantastical, storylines of his video games and books. When she was younger she had been, but as she finished high school and entered college, they had sort of slipped away from her. She supposed this had something to do with being responsible for more things, but she still couldn't get the feeling out of her mind that she was missing something. When reading Toby's books, her mind always told her what was going to happen. These musings were always wildly fantastic stories, but in the end nothing came of them, and Sarah let them slip away through the same back door of her mind through which they had come.

She sat down on her bed and started to pick up the biography she had been reading for her Literature class. She stopped when she thought of the essay she needed to write by Thursday. In true Professional Procrastinator fashion, she decided to do neither until after the nap her eyes were telling her to take. Before she even managed to get through the thought that she should have told Toby she was going to lay down, she was asleep and dreaming.

The room was crowded and sometimes she had to push people gently out of the way to get where she was going. She wasn't entirely sure where exactly that was, but something in her told her that she had to get there. She could feel herself getting closer, but at the same time the people in the room seemed to pull in closer together. Pushing harder, she made her way deeper into the center of the room.

Like ghosts or memories, the people floated around the room as if they didn't see her. They were dressed in the attire of the people attending the balls in her historical literature books, corsets and petticoats everywhere. Looking down she saw that the extravagance of their garb was nothing compared to her own. The entire dress appeared to be made of lace and clouds with pearls sewn on with silken thread. After shoving a few more people out of her way on the rapidly crowding dance floor, Sarah realized that she was the only person in the crowd without a mask. This ball must be a masquerade, she thought to herself.

The urging in her head to reach her destination guided her steadily on. She couldn't think of this as a dream, no matter how hard she tried. In her head, she rationalized this feeling by telling herself it was all part of the dream. However, no matter how many times she told herself this, she got a shock each time she felt the reality of the masquerader that she was pushing away.

Without warning, she felt strong arms around her, and was staring up at the most frightening mask she had ever seen. Horribly misshapen eyes sat perched across sharp, high cheek bones. Teeth of varying lengths and sharpness protruded from the lipless mouth. It was stark white, with no shadow at all. The only relief from the white lay in the black, empty eyes, and looming threateningly above it all were the black demon horns.

Sarah's internal guide shut off and she found herself whirling across the floor with the dancer in the demon mask. "Who are you?" she kept her voice calm only with the knowledge that the last thing she had done was go to sleep, so logically this must be a dream.

"Only someone requiring your help," the masked man told her in a voice as strong as his arms and as beautiful and melodious as his mask was horrible. "Time is running out."

What a complex dream this is, she thought, thinking of her usually boring ones. "My help with what? How soon will time run out?" She thought she might as well amuse her newfound imagination.

"I cannot say, only that I will tell you more when you arrive."

"Arrive where?" it was becoming steadily harder to keep the fear and confusion out of her voice.

"In the kingdom you chose to leave so long ago. I'm not allowed to bring you back. You must come on your own."

"And if I don't?" she asked defiantly, trying to resist the hypnotic persuasion in his voice.

"Then all is lost," there was true sadness there. "Your hair has gotten long Sarah," he said, suddenly conversational, but Sarah didn't have time to think about when he had seen her hair when it was short.

"How do I get there? And how long will this take?" she added as an afterthought.

"I know not, but if we are successful in our endeavor, you will have plenty of time."

"But what about how I get there?" Sarah asked urgently, because already the dream was beginning to fade. As the floor crumbled beneath her, his answer was garbled. Then, all went black

She woke up in her room, and, after her hands scrambled all over her bedside table for a lamp, the light clicked on. Hurriedly, she checked to see if she was wearing the dress. She was still in her jeans, and they were wet with sweat. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and ran to the bathroom.

The cold water running over her face and neck made her feel a little more real. Hands dripping she reached for the towel and saw Toby's reflection behind her in the mirror. "What's up?" she tried to sound casual, but Toby's reply made her heart stop in her chest.

"You know we have to go, don't you Sarah?"

Sarah whirled around so fast her hair caught on the door knobs to the counter under the sink. Turning to untangle it, she asked Toby the question burning in her mind and making her vision blur. "How do you know about that?"  
Toby, however, was preoccupied. "Sarah, why do you wear your hair so long? I've seen the pictures from when I was little, and back then you always wore it short. Why long?"

"People always told me that my hair was beautiful and silky. They always said I should wear it longer, and I guess I just got it stuck in my head and I just stopped chopping it off. But that's beside the point now. What is it that we are supposed to be doing? And how do you know what was in my dream?"

"I just know, but we've got to go _now._"

"Hold it! No one's going anywhere! We are staying here where we told our parents we'd be! How would we even get there anyway?"

"Here I'll show you!" and with that, Toby raced downstairs before Sarah could even finish untangling her hair. She yanked it sharply, breaking the hair, but there was no time to worry about it now. She followed Toby down the stairs to the front door.

"Don't open it!" she screamed. Unexplainably, she knew that once he opened the door, there would be no going back. However, Toby just looked at her, almost sadly.

"Sarah we have to. You'll understand later."

He opened the door. Instead of the cold Jersey air, mist came seeping in like it had been clawing at the door, just waiting for them to open it. It seeped in seeking its way towards the two of them, unnaturally thick for fog. Like fingers creeping along the floor, the fog reached Sarah's feet, and she felt it _tug._ What is going on, she thought.

Before she really knew what was happening, she was being pulled out of the house into the swirling massive wall of fog. She reached blindly for Toby's hand. She squeezed it tightly as the fog pulled them deeper. No matter what, we're in this together, she thought.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"If you turn it this way, you can see your dreams," Jareth murmured under his breath, but it did no good. No matter how he turned and rolled the crystal, he could never see her.

Back and forth, back and forth, the ball rolled smoothly across Jareth's palm, fingers, fingertips, the back of his hand and back again. Hoggle had rarely seen Jareth so distraught, but this mood was coming on more and more often in these days. A few years ago, after his failure at winning Sarah's heart, he had sunk into his dreamlike state for so long that Hoggle had feared that he would stay that way forever. Then, after a few months, Jareth had seemed to recover. He had seemed to forget about Sarah, and spent only a few days out of the year staring listlessly out of the window.

Of course, the window had been sunny then. For the last few weeks the sky had been getting darker and darker. Then only three days ago, the storm had fallen and looked as if it would never stop.

Hoggle paced the room now as he had always done. Jareth had always kept Hoggle close at hand, like a secretary, but for a king. He walked a well worn track in the stone floor. Though Sarah didn't know it, Hoggle had been working on Jareth's orders from the very beginning. They had all loved Sarah, however, that much was true. Hoggle was spared the painful memories from the earsplitting crash and excited cry from across the room.

"I saw her, Hoggle! I know I did!" Jareth was staring at the broken crystal ball. Like tiny diamonds, its pieces littered the floor at his feet. Jareth's expression, however, didn't look sad or disappointed about dropping his favorite crystal. Instead his features were wide and bright with joy. It was a rather disturbing change from his doleful expression of a few minutes ago.

Hoggle ignored Jareth and swept away a few pieces of the crystal to clear him a space to kneel. Once on the floor he began gathering the tiny pieces into his shirt. He had stopped carrying around the broom and dustpan years ago. Once Jareth learned his tricks and gained control of his crystals there had been no need.

"You're not understanding me, Hoggle! I _saw_ her!"

"Who is it that you saw, Jareth?" asked Hoggle tiredly, looking into his leader's face.

"I saw Sarah!"

"You did what?" Hoggle nearly cried with frustration.

"Saw Sarah!" Jareth repeated brightly.

"Jareth, what have you done? You know it's not allowed. She didn't choose you, she forgot you, she can never speak to you again."

"That's where you're wrong," said Jareth angrily, "You've got the last part wrong. The Law simply says that I can never bring her back, I can never remove the memory charm, and I can't ask her to choose me. However, if she came here of her own free will, broke the memory charm on her own, and decided she did love me, there would be nothing to stop her. Not even the Law." Jareth ended his speech happier than he had begun. He was now staring out of the window hopefully, looking past all the rain, and his pale cheeks gained a little color.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Hoggle knelt once more on the ground. So, Jareth was still carrying his flame for her after all these years. He wondered if he would prefer a fickle king to his foolishly optimistic one. No progress, he thought, looking down at the glass-littered floor.

Just as he began to consider going for the broom, a loud popping noise filled the air, echoing off of the walls. He and Jareth both whirled around at the same moment. Once again, Hoggle sent forgotten pieces of broken glass skittering around the castle room. The tinkling sound of the pieces on the stone floor was the only sound except for the constant dripping coming from the end of Sarah's sleeve.

There, in the middle of the Jareth's study chamber in the library, stood none other than Sarah and Toby. While, Sarah stood dumbstruck, looking around at the room, she saw a young man positively leap across the room, landing lightly and, to Sarah's surprise, gathered Toby in a fierce hug. Even more surprising, perhaps, was the fact that Toby hugged him back. "You remind me of the babe!" he said, laughing.

This confused Sarah even more. She wanted to yell and scream and cry like a child, since Toby didn't seem to be doing his job. However, her body seemed to have stopped responding. So, she had no choice but to watch.

As she watched Toby act like he was reunited with and old friend, she watched the man he was laughing with. At first glance, he appeared to be around her age, but a sidelong glance revealed him to be much older, and something about him reminded Sarah of a child, albeit a weirdly tall one.

The room was fashioned medieval-castle style complete with stone floor, and standing across the room was what appeared to be a slightly misshapen midget. He stared dumbstruck at her, and she stared right back. After a minute however, he didn't drop his gaze so she uncomfortably turned her attention back to the man who appeared to have finished with Toby.

Now he approached her. She wondered if she was supposed to know him like Toby did. She hoped not, because she didn't. There was, however, something familiar about him. "Hello, Sarah," he said, dropping to his knees and taking her hand to kiss it lightly on the middle knuckle.

Sarah pulled back as she recognized the voice. She tried to remember what the masked man had looked like, but it was no good. With all of the whirling and dancing, she hadn't really looked at anything but the mask. True, the mask was frightening enough to merit her full attention, but she couldn't remember anything else about the man she had danced with but his strong arms. Chancing, a glance at the arms of the man in front of her, she saw that he did indeed fit the description of the man from her dream.

This dream, she reminded herself, for there was no way this was reality. It was an unusual dream, and it was a vivid dream, but a dream nonetheless. Trying to convince herself, she tuned back in to what the man was saying. "Sarah, do you remember me?" She didn't ask how he knew her name, but nodded her head in reply.

The man's face was ecstatic. Maybe it was this gesture of human weakness, but suddenly, with courage she didn't know she had, she spoke out. "Not so strong and mysterious and confident without your scary mask to hide behind, are you?"

The young man's face fell, making the drastic change in his appearance from a child at Disney world to that of an old man who's realized his time is coming. "Y-you're remembering the dream, then?" he asked her.

"Of course I'm remembering the dream! What else? I've never met you before!"

The man looked as if he'd like to tell her otherwise, but a look from the midget shut him up.

"Now, who are you, and why have you brought us here?" she positively yelled.

"But I didn't bring you!" the man said angrily. "You and Toby came here of your own accord."

"Well, send us back!" she flung back.

"I can't," The man was yelling now. "Now, you came here! You figure out how to get home!" He finished this last at a roar, and Sarah collapsed into a sobbing heap on the stone floor.

Toby moved to stand by his sister. He looked accusingly up at Jareth, then Hoggle. Jareth looked down at Sarah, seemingly shocked by her tears.

"Hoggle will show you to your rooms now." He was no longer angry or yelling. His voice was quiet and calm and Toby thought he heard true sadness there. "When you feel ready, I will speak more fully with you about what might be done. Your rooms are next to mine, so I should be close when you want me. However, the castle is yours to explore should you so choose. If you get lost, or are ready to talk, any in the castle will help you. My name is Jareth, King of the Goblins."

With that he swept out of the room. The Dracula-like cape he wore about his shoulders snapped softly in the wind made by his brisk pace. Hoggle cast a glance at the two of them before hurrying out of the room following the man called Jareth. Then, Toby was left alone with his sister and her sobs.

Hoggle was almost out of breath when he caught up with his king. Jareth was taller than an average man, and his long legs gave him the ability to appear to be taking a leisurely stroll while outstripping several passing joggers. Hoggle, with his short legs, had trouble keeping up with Jareth, and catching up was a new challenge entirely.

"What about Elizabeth?" Hoggle asked him hurriedly, fearful that if he stopped to catch his breath, Jareth would walk on.

"I made her cry Hoggle. Did you see? Of course you did, she was _sobbing_. I'm such an idiot when it comes to her."

"She'll be fine, Jareth, it's just shock. But, Elizabeth! What about _her_," Hoggle asked.

"Who?" came the reply.

"Elizabeth, Jareth! Your Queen and wife!" Hoggle said angrily.

"Oh, yes!" said Jareth distractedly. "Well, what about her?" he asked impatiently. He was getting annoyed with the dwarf. If Hoggle wasn't going to say anything of any importance, he should let Jareth get to his room to think.

"You just gave her rooms to Sarah and Toby!"

"Well, then, move her!" Jareth shouted. "Listen, Hoggle. I take your advice more than enough, but _this _is where I draw the line. _This_ is Sarah! When I took Elizabeth, she was told that it was a marriage of necessity. I told her myself that I loved another. Now, attend to our guests!"

Hoggle watched Jareth go sadly. Yes, Elizabeth had been told from the beginning that Jareth didn't love her, but that didn't stop her feelings. Everyone in the castle could see how much she loved her husband.

When a dejected Hoggle returned to the room, Sarah was still crying on the floor. It seemed as though she had run out of tears, however, because they were all a dry sobs. On the way back to the Library Hoggle had stopped one of the guards who could do magic and sent him to inform Miss Elizabeth of this new arrangement and help transport her belongings to a new room. He had promised them some extra time, so now, with Sarah and Toby in tow, he walked slowly but deliberately down all the lengthy detours he could think of.

Toby clung at Sarah's hand like the child he no longer was. It was kind of embarrassing, but it cheered Sarah up as he had known it would. Sarah's eyes were puffy and tired from crying, and her wet clothes clung irritatingly and restricted her movement. She walked docilely down the hallway, holding Toby's hand.

When they reached the rooms, Hoggle was glad to see that Elizabeth's things had been moved already. He would stop by her new rooms after he left Sarah and see how she was taking this. The rooms were simple enough. There were 5 rooms: a sitting room, a bathroom, a small kitchen-like eating room, a room for Sarah and a room for Toby. In the room for Toby, looking extremely out of place, sat his play station and TV. Sarah couldn't really see anything that it as plugged into, but when Toby turned it on, it worked.

After making sure Toby was settled for a while, Sarah examined her own room. With almost nothing but a mirror, her room was perfect by her standards. There was also a small cupboard that appeared to serve as a wardrobe, and when Sarah opened it, it was filled with fluffy ballroom gowns that Sarah would never wear. She turned the midget who was called Hoggle as he had told her on the walk over here. He told her to close it and think hard about what she wanted to wear, and when she opened it again it was filled with long t-shirts twice her size.

The bed was nearly twice the size of her bed at home and 3 times as tall. When Sarah tested it with her hand, she knew it would be perfect to sleep on. She bade Hoggle goodnight, for it appeared to be night at this castle. She assured him she was fine and then sent him on his way. She told Toby she would be taking a nap, but Toby was so wrapped up in his game, she wondered if he'd heard at all.

After she changed into one of the nightshirts in the wardrobe, Sarah climbed onto the bed and tried to pick the exact middle. She made a box out of the mountains of pillows, then, feeling a little safer, lay down to sleep. With all that had happened to fast, Sarah expected to lay awake awhile thinking, but before she had even started to convince her brain that right now she needed sleep, the room was filled with the slow rhythmic sound of her breathing.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sarah was awake long before she opened her eyes. She lay there in the darkness of her own eyelids for several moments reflecting on her dreams. They had been nightmares really. In one she was trapped inside a glass bauble, running out of air. Another had featured a bottomless tunnel through which she was falling. She shivered slightly thinking of the walls of the tunnel. They had been nothing but moving hands and arms. They had _spoken _to her. In the last dream Jareth had sat in a chair by her bed in his castle, watching her sleep. She wasn't sure when she stopped dreaming, but now she was awake.

She knew now that it had been no dream. She and her brother Toby had, by some strange way, traveled to the Goblin Kingdom, where they had met its king, a man called Jareth. Jareth had yelled at her and told her that he couldn't take her home, then he had left them with his servant. Hoggle had taken them to their rooms, where Sarah now understood they would have to stay until she found a way to get them home. The last thing that she remembered was being overcome with tiredness that she could only attribute to shock and sadness, and she had lay down to sleep.

And here I still am, she thought. It wasn't a dream. A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye and she felt it hit the pillow beneath her cheek. "Don't cry Sarah," came Toby's voice from her bedside.

Sarah opened her eyes and saw Toby sitting in a chair beside her bed. The chair hadn't been there when she had fallen asleep, and she shivered again, thinking of the last dream. "Where'd that chair come from, Toby?"

"I found it in the sitting room," Toby told her. "I finished my game and decided to wait until you woke up so we could check out the castle."

"How long did you sit there?"

"Only a couple of hours. Hoggle came by and told me what time it was. Apparently it was late last night when we got here, maybe that's why you were so tired. But it's morning now!"

A couple of hours, huh? Toby always did have tons of patience. Sarah opened her mouth to tell Toby that exploring this place wasn't a good idea, but then decided that they might as well. Apparently they would be here awhile. "Alright, give me a minute to get dressed."

Toby left the room and Sarah approached her magic wardrobe warily. Jeans, she thought, I want jeans. However, when she opened the wardrobe, all she found were the fluffy dresses of the night before.

Pants, she tried again. Shorts, leggings, capris, nothing worked. Each time the wardrobe was full to burst with frilly, lacy dresses. Throwing what little sense of reality she had left to the wind, Sarah began to speak to her wardrobe. It seemed as though she was resigned to wear a ton of fluff, until at last she made _some_ headway. After threatening to wear the nightshirt she now had on, she opened the doors to find a plain white dress.

With no lace, and no frills at all, the dresses only adornments was a silken belt, the same sky blue color as the dress. After checking the material over and over for hidden pearls and sequins, Sarah put it on. The dress hung straight down to the middle of her calves. With the belt tied loosely in the middle, the simple thing showed off her hips and waist, but wasn't too dressy at all. "This will work for now, but I will speak with the people in charge here about pants," Sarah told what she assumed to be a very sulky wardrobe.

First, Sarah and Toby retraced their steps of the night before. People all along the corridors greeted them kindly, sometimes offering help, but Sarah always politely refused it. To Sarah's relief, they never happened upon Jareth. After they reached the Library, Sarah lost Toby. The shelves were huge and high and Sarah gave up. She felt confident that he would be okay here, if not completely happy. That, in itself, was more than she should hope for considering the mess she had gotten them into.

She wandered down the halls alone, speaking a kind greeting when spoken to, and refusing all the help. She didn't enter the rooms until, some time after her stomach had begun to growl, she found a room with the most delicious mixture of smells he had ever smelled seeping out into the stony hallway. Before she knew it she was knocking on the door, asking if there were enough food for her. "Of course, Miss Sarah!" came the reply of the dwarf-like woman in front of her.

Sarah followed her into a set of rooms much like her own, only much smaller, and shabbier. The lady sat her down at a table that was already filled with people. "Toby!" Sarah cried when she saw him, sitting there across the table between Hoggle and an even smaller resident of the castle.

"This is Sir Didymus," Hoggle told her, pointing to the small fox-like creature on the other side of Toby as she took a seat next to him. Didymus smiled a pointy toothed smile and was elbowed in the ribs when he started to speak with his mouth full. Sarah couldn't help but laughing.

"You're enjoying your time here, then?" Hoggle asked her after lunch as they made their way down yet another unexplored corridor.

"I'm okay. I should have never gotten Toby and myself into this mess. But when Toby ran for the door, instead of jumping to stop him, I yelled. Like that would do anything! Truth is I was really curious about what we would find here. I'm glad it's nothing like my dream. Jareth was much scarier there."

"About Jareth," Hoggle said, stopping to turn and talk to her, "Don't judge him on last night. He'd kill me for telling you, but he was really upset that he upset you."

"Oh, I don't think I was really that upset. Just the hopelessness on top of the shock really got to me."

"I told him it was the shock. I'm assuming that you haven't yet talked to him this morning?"

"No, I was going to wait until... later I guess."

"That's fine, he will wait for you I'm sure. But enough about Jareth, just don't judge him yet." Hoggle turned and began walking again, rather swiftly for his short legs. "C'mon. There's something I think you'll like down here."

Sarah followed him for a quarter of an hour or so down a spiral staircase through the castle. After awhile they came out in what appeared to b a dungeon. "Don't worry. We have no need of a dungeon so Jareth's given it to the animals that live in the castle. And Ludo," Hoggle added as an afterthought. The room was quite large and quite empty. Every few yards or so there was a huge pillar running from floor to ceiling. Even as big as the pillars were it made Sarah nervous to think that they were all that was holding the castle up above them, but Hoggle, as if reading her mind, beckoned her on, "It's more than pillars that keep this castle afloat."

"It's magic isn't it?" said Sarah, carefully stepping over the piles of hay on the floor.

"Of course it is!" Hoggle told her. "It's Jareth's you know? Even if all of the denizens of the castle who are able to do magic were to put all of their magic together it wouldn't compare to his. Humans have never really understood magic, Sarah. You all think it's a foreign thing, which only goblins or fairies or elves can do, but that's not true at all. In fact, it's humans where we get all of our magic. Something so powerful and eternal can only be found in something as passionate and ephemeral as a human. Ah, here we go!"

He was pointing across the empty dungeon toward a not so distant corner where three indistinct figures sat huddled around a fireplace, but Sarah was still thinking about something Hoggle had said a moment ago. "Jareth is a human?" she asked.

"_Was_ a human. He isn't anymore. Now he is nothing, but King of the Underground."

"Are we underground then?"

"No not really. That is what the Goblin Kingdom is called. Jareth is our king, but none of the Underground kings have been from here. Why so curious?"

"I don't know really. I just don't know much about this place, and it seems as though it will be awhile until we get home," her face fell even as she said it.

Hoggle patted her kindly on the shoulder. "Speak with Jareth. It might not be that long. Ludo!" Hoggle turned his attention away from her to the creatures they were coming closer and closer to.

"Hog-gul," came a sort of slow and stupid voice from the largest of the creatures in front of her. However before pausing to figure out what it was that was speaking, the voice had spoken again, more urgently this time. "SAR-UH!" it yelled as it lumbered toward her. On closer inspection, the hulking beast seemed to be an overgrown orangutan with horns and the ability to speak broken, childlike English.

Sarah had stopped wondering how the people here knew her name. "Ludo!" she cried as he ran forward to hug her. Thank goodness I can read Hoggle's lips, she thought, because, judging by the way Ludo had reacted at her presence, he might have been thoroughly distraught had she not 'recognized' him.

Several hours later Sarah found herself, once again walking alone down a deserted hallway. Once again, she had eaten dinner at a table crowded with people who knew her that she had never seen before in her life. The proximity of so many people had made her hot, stuffy, and claustrophobic. Now, she almost wished she hadn't refused Hoggle's offer for directions to the balcony, but she supposed if she searched long enough she would find it.

She felt the cold before she saw the doors, and when she rounded the turn, they were insight and unlocked. The balcony seemed to wrap around the outside of the castle's corner that Sarah had just turned inside. She moved the other side of the corner so that people wouldn't see her out here and come to talk, because she wanted to be alone right now.

She looked carefully over the side of the balcony onto a floor of swirling mists. She shivered and hoped that this fog didn't have the mind of its own that the last fog she'd encountered had. It was raining on the balcony. The night air was cold but the rain was warm and the steady drizzle felt good on her skin. She untied the ribbon she'd been using to tie up her hair, letting her hair fall down her back, some ends clinging to her wet elbows.

She took a deep breath and decided to think about what they would do. It was kind of nice here. There was no job to worry about, no money problems. It was a nice sort of vacation. Still she knew they couldn't stay, and she supposed the first step to getting out of here was to talk to Jareth. She remembered what Hoggle had said about not judging Jareth yet, and she trusted Hoggle. Last night's encounter, however, was not the greatest of first impressions.

How was she to find Jareth, anyway? She had purposely walked away from all the signs of life in the castle so she could be alone, but now that she thought about it, it had been a stupid thing to do. It would take her a good 15 minutes to get back to everyone who would help, but she had everything she wanted to say planned in her head now. "Oh, Jareth. Where are you when I need you?" she said under her breath to the mists swirling beneath her.

"I will always be where ever you want me to be, Sarah, but you could just seek me out inside the castle. You'll catch a cold if you stay out here too long." He spoke from behind her as she looked out over the mists. When she didn't speak again he moved to stand beside her. It took all he had not to put his arm around her and stare at her; instead he clasped his hand in front of him, leaned on his elbows, and looked out over the mists with her.

"What's that over there?" she asked reaching across him to point at a patch of lightening.

Jareth shivered at her sleeve brushing his arm. She didn't know it, but she had worn that same dress in the park the day before he first met her. He had been there watching her. "Sarah, you may not yet know it, but my kingdom is in the middle of a war. That is why the castle is so crowded. Usually, it is not nearly so big, nor so full. However, the war has become more intense lately. Enemy troops have invaded the labyrinth in places. The only place safe was the castle. It's taking much more of my strength to hold this place together than it ever has before.

"This is why I've asked you here, Sarah. I need your help. I'm not sure what your place will be, but I know that if I ride into battle without you, I haven't a hope of winning. Somehow, everything will depend on you."

"Did your crystal ball tell you this?" Sarah teased him. She felt much more at ease with Jareth than she had anticipated. Maybe it was because of the height difference, but she felt so apart from everyone there. Jareth was taller than she was, and represented a stronger something to hold onto. She recognized that he had not meant to be so harsh last night. He had been under a lot of stress from what she understood, and stress can make anyone irritated. She might not have cried had the events of last night not been so stressful on her as well.

"As a matter of fact, yes," he told her, conversationally. "Most of the magic that any Goblin King will ever do will be done with crystal balls. Here, watch!" He produced a crystal from somewhere under his billowing black clothes. Rolling it back and forth, he stared at it almost as intently as Sarah did. After a few moments, he threw it up into the air where it hung there like a small sun. The crystal's light was so bright that the rain stopped falling on Sarah, and she could almost feel her skin drying. After a moment, its light died and the crystal was nowhere to be seen.

"So there is sunlight here?" Sarah asked as the rain began to drizzle onto her skin. It was colder now that she had felt the warmth of the sun.

"There used to be. Now the only bit is artificial. Magically produced is still artificial." he answered the question before she asked it. "Sunlight used to be quite common here, but there is a shield around the castle. I dare not lower it for a little bit of sunlight, and transparent shields are harder to produce. Sometimes, this mist is thinner or even absent, and on those days you can see the labyrinth surrounding the castle, however it still looks like night. Sometimes I just don't know what to do. I want to keep my people happy and healthy, but I want to keep them safe, too. They keep asking for my help, and I'm doing my best but I don't even know if I'm making a difference."

Jareth ran his wet fingers through his golden hair, making the spikes stick up even more. For the first time, Sarah realized that the rain wasn't hitting him. His hands were wet only because they had touched the wet balcony. "You have to help Toby and me as well."

"I don't have to."

"I don't have to help you."

"But you will."

"As will you."

"Glad to know we are on the same page, then."

"Yes, now how will I go about getting us home?"

"I could send you," Jareth conceded, holding up a hand to stop Sarah's outburst. "But it will take more power than I have now. I would have to win this war first. Either that or make tremendous headway. Enough to lower the shield."

"Then here are my terms. I agree to help you in whatever way I can, until you have the strength to send us home. If, between now and then, I find some other way home, I am not obligated to stay."

"As long as you promise to help in whatever way you can."

"I do."

Sarah held out her hand and Jareth shook it. Sarah pulled her hand free and gathered her hair in her hands, wringing out a little of the water, before stepping back into the castle.

"Well, Jareth," she declared, "It has been nice meeting you." She wanted Jareth to take this as an end to the conversation; for she felt like she had achieved quite enough for one day and that another nap was in order. However, when Jareth insisted on walking her to her room, Sarah did not refuse him.

"I feel as if I've met you before," she told him sleepily as they reached her door. A mischievous smirk flickered across his handsome features, but he recovered remarkably.

"Until tomorrow, then."

"Yes, tomorrow, Jareth."

"Sarah..." Jareth began, leaning down to kiss her, but the door was already closed. Jareth slumped against the door, smiling stupidly at his progress of the evening. Maybe he should have taken the dwarf's advice against playing hard to get last time.

Sarah made sure Toby was asleep before throwing changing and throwing herself into her box of pillows. "Oh, no," she said aloud. "I forgot to speak with Jareth about my wearing pants." Though it might have been only her imagination, she thought she heard a quiet snicker from the corner in which her wardrobe stood.


	5. Chapter 4

A/N: sorry it has taken me so long to get my act together and update. school, other projects and laziness have kept me away. but i will try to update again soon. i usually spend alot of time on stories and don't like them in the end, but i feel like if i just keep it together i can make this be pretty decent (for a fanfic anyway!) please review!

Chapter 4

It's really not a dream, was Sarah's waking thought before she opened her eyes to her own bedroom. Wide-eyed, she sat up and looked around. There on the wall was the shelf that had held her collectible teddy bears since she was little. There on the vanity mirror were the pictures her friend had sent her from Jamaica last week. She was sitting on the bed she had slept in since she was eight years old.

When she got out of the bed, she felt soft carpet underfoot. Her feet were bruised and sore from her barefoot romp around the castle yesterday. They were cold reminders that the soft carpet under them was not real. She sat down in front of the mirror and saw that the reflection showed her room in Jareth's castle.

"Toby!" she screamed, standing up.

" Yes, Sarah!" Toby replied, appearing at the door way. It must still be night she thought, eyeing Toby's night clothes and the sleepy look in his eyes.

"How long has it been like this?"

Toby bit back his annoyance at being woken up. "I don't know."

"Good, now go back to bed!"

"But," Toby began.

"No buts!" she yelled at Toby as she stormed toward the door. Toby waited until she was gone to roll his eyes, shrug, and then head back to his room.

"Change it back!" she screamed, pounding on Jareth's door. "I want it back to normal!" Her shrieking stopped suddenly as Jareth opened the door.

Jareth looked her up and down, and suddenly Sarah realized how this must look. The t-shirt she wore tonight was many times too big, but not nearly so long as the one from the last night, and here she was pounding on Jareth's door. "Hello," Jareth said, smiling in a way Sarah did not like at all. She had seen that look on the faces of too many boys in college to not know what they were thinking. Her answer was the same as always. Sarah slapped Jareth across the face and thundered _back_ to her room. Jareth followed.

"I thought you'd like this," he told her earnestly, rubbing his cheek. The anger that had flared up in his eyes at being slapped was driven away by bewilderment. "I thought if it looked like normal, you wouldn't feel as if you were being held here. That maybe it wouldn't feel so much like a prison."

Sarah almost softened at the sincerity in his voice, but her anger returned as she looked around the room. "Jareth! Look at this! There're curtains with no windows behind them. There're telephones with no dial tone. I know you meant well, but this place feels more like a prison than anything. The other room laid all its cards on the table and in this one I just have to look around every now and then and see that something I've thought I loved all my life is lying to me. I'd really appreciate it if you'd just change it back to the castle room."

"What, now?" Jareth asked. Sarah couldn't tell whether he was irritated, hurt, or embarassed.

"Yes," Sarah said, "I want it all changed back! The bed, the floors, the walls, the dresser-- Wait!"

Sarah stopped speaking. Before Jareth could ask her what she had meant, she had turned around and sprinted toward her bedroom. When Jareth got there she was standing at the dresser looking crestfallen and speaking to no one in particular.

"That stupid wardrobe! It's not fair! All I want is a nice pair of pants to wear, and all it will give me is dresses!" Sarah whirled around to find Jareth doubled over and laughing at her. "What's so funny? Don't laugh!"

"But you're so funny!"

"I am not!" By now, however, Jareth was laughing so hard that he couldn't even answer her. Sarah's rage flared up even more. "You know what I think? I think you should take your twisted sense of humor along with your dumb ideas and go back to your own room, because you can't stay here."

Jareth stopped laughing, and turned to walk towards the door. "Sounds like a great idea to me!" he snarled angrily.

"Well fine!" Sarah said.

"Fine!" Jareth yelled back as he walked out the door.

"Fine!" Sarah screamed as she slammed the door shut behind him. She turned around to find Toby standing in the middle of their castle living room.

"You're 24, Sarah. Why do you act like a teenager around Jareth?" and without waiting for an answer he turned back to his bedroom. Sarah stood there a moment longer before huffing back to her room.

The next day at lunch time, however, Jareth joined them in what Sarah thought of as the Lunch Room. He took his seat next to Sarah, and they slipped into easy conversation. No one could deny that Sarah seemed comfortable with Jareth. Just as Sarah could not deny how much she liked the castle.

She had expected to hate it here. She had really thought she would feel, as Jareth put it, like she was in a prison. Instead, she found herself knowing her way around, by the the end of the second day, and even knowing quite a few of the residents by name. She explored during the day, and each night she and Jareth met on the balcony. Sometimes they spoke of the castle, others they spoke of Sarah's world. Jareth's world, too, she reminded herself. She still had not gathered the courage to ask him about it, though.

Sometimes Jareth talked about his life here as Goblin King. Although this happened rarely, it was during one of these times that Sarah learned of Elizabeth. While Jareth was talking about the war and all the developments, he mentioned that 3 days before she and Toby had arrived, his son Jaret had been stolen by the enemy. It had been over a week, he told her, and his wife had all but given up hope.

"Your _wife_?" Sarah asked incredulously. Though he had never succeded, over the past 5 days, Jareth had tried to kiss her. Through a combination of pretending to not notice as she looked away at just the right moment and once or twice blatantly rejecting him, Sarah had thus far avoided his lips, with the exception of Jareth's dramatic greetings in which he dropped to one knee and kissed her middle knuckle.

"Yes," Jareth answered her, unperturbed by the fact that he had kept this from her.

"I didn't know you had a wife, Jareth" Sarah said, and Jareth could tell by her voice that she was wrestling between anger and hurt. He saw his chance and decided to speak before she had picked one.

"I can explain, Sarah."

"It had better be good Jareth."

"I don't love my wife," he said simply.

"Oh! Well, that's okay, then," Sarah started, sarcastically.

"I'm not done! She knows that I don't. About 8 years ago, I suffered a loss that I can't tell you about. It broke my heart. With that loss, came despair. I had lost all hope. I now had almost no chance of acquiring a queen or an heir. All our queens must come from the mortal world, you see. Then, one day when I was looking in my, you guessed it, crystal ball, I saw a mortal who had given up hope. She was young, pregnant, and alone, searching for some way of saving her baby. The father had left, and her parents wanted an abortion.

"I felt a certain sense of understanding compassion for this woman I'd never met before, so I brought her here to my Labyrinth. After explaining my situation to her, I offered her two options. I can interfere with the mortal world to some extent, you know. The first choice was a complete abortion, in which she wouldn't remember the baby ever having been there. Neither would her father, mother, or the baby's father. It was, in a sense, the perfect fix. No baby, and no pain at having lost it. The second choice was to stay here, and be my queen, with the baby named whatever I wanted and raised to be my heir.

"She chose the second choice. Anything to save her baby. She was told everything from the very beginning, and knows that this was a marriage of necessity, not of love."

Sarah who had kept silent throughout his explanation, now spoke, "That still gives you no right to break the bonds of marriage, Jareth."

"I know that, Sarah. However, if something is not done about Jaret soon, I may have to send Elizabeth back to her world. Execute the first choice I gave her. She wouldn't remember a thing and it may be less tough on her. If Jaret truly is lost, I would need to find a new heir, also. I know how heartless that sounded," he said in response to Sarah's look, "But it may never happen. Besides, if this war is not won, my reign is over, heir or no."

Not knowing what to say about such a depressing personal topic that she felt no part of, Sarah waited a moment before attempting to change the subject. "Why have I not met her? Elizabeth, I mean."

"She has not left her rooms for days. I invite her to lunch with us everyday, but she isn't eating much at all, and what little she does eat, she has brought to her rooms."

"Well, let's have lunch with her in _her_ rooms then."

"Us?"

"Yes, why not?"

"I will talk to her about it."

By the fourth day Sarah was not so shy about poking around the castle. It was in this way that she discovered the Escher Room. When she happened upon a corridor that morning that she had never seen, Sarah ran to open the only door along the wall. She found herself looking at a maze of staircases. Some went up, some went down, some ran horizontally, but all were identical stone steps.

Sarah ran back to her room for supplies. Thankfully, the kitchen cabinets were more cooperative than her wardrobe whose variations were still limited to fancy and fancier. She returned to the new corridor with a large ball of yarn and a box of square pieces of lead.

She made her way from staircase to staircase with the string tied to the door handle. She let it trail on the ground behind her, and every few yards or each time she changed directions, she placed a piece of lead on the string to hold it down. She followed the stairs for what felt like forever, but eventually she reached the bottom.

There she found a mirror. It was painted to resemble a window, but it was done so well that Sarah would have thought it was one had she not thrown the last of her string at it as a test. There were letters around the edges, but none that Sarah understood. She could see her reflection in the mirror and the maze of staircases behind her, but the longer she looked at the window-like mirror, the more she thought something seemed wrong about the reflection. The light in the room was bad, however, and after a long while she assumed the wrongness Sarah saw in the reflection came from that.

The route back seemed extremel unfamiliar. Sarah knew she was going the right way because she was following the string. However, there were several times when she climbed or descended a particularly steep staircase that she was almost certain she had not climbed on the way in. Nevertheless, she eventually reached the door.

How long she had been in the staircase maze, she didn't know, but her stomach hurt with hunger. As she walked back along the way she had come, she wondered about what she had seen and what it might mean. Hunger won her over, however, and she asked the time from the next person she saw. When they told her it was almost dinner time, Sarah promptly thanked him and changed her direction to head for her usual eating place.

"You seem hungry today," Jareth observed casually from his place at Sarah's side.

Sarah only nodded, her mouth full.

"Hoggle tells me you missed lunch. Were you exploring?"

Another nod.

"Just a suggestion, but how about no exploring tomorrow? I haven't seen you today so this will be your first to hear. Tomorrow night I'm holding a banquet in the main hall. Also, if you still wanted to, we can eat lunch with Elizabeth tomorrow. I'll pick you up at your rooms at 11 and escort you there. Is that satisfactory? There's no hurry to answer," he added as Sarah appeared to be choking on the half-chewed pound of steak currently in her mouth.

After her recovery, Sarah resumed the conversation as if half of the room had not just attempted to give her the heimlich manuveur. "Yes, that sounds good to me. What should I wear?"

"Wear?"  
"To the lunch with your wife?" Sarah prompted.

"Oh, that? Whatever you want," Jareth said airily. He turned to look at Sarah, then visibly cowered before her expression of anger and hate. However, Sarah's eyes were focused on something that only she could see.

"Whatever I want! Did you hear that?" she muttered under her breath. "You can't stop me now! Jareth said so!"

Jareth could only stare in bewilderment as Sarah ranted on and on. After a moment, he felt a tugging at his elbow. Toby had been sitting beside him and it was he that spke to him now, "Don't worry about that, she's speaking to her dresser."


	6. Chapter 5

A/N: I know this is probably full of spelling and grammatical errors. I wrote a research paper last week, and my brain is in correctness overload (did that make sense?), but i really wanted to get this chapter up. Some of it was written at 2 a.m. Some was written on the Holy Roller (my church van) on the way home from a six hour drive to Atlanta to volunteer at Operation Christmas Child. and yet more was written at my own house as I coped with things like mind-crippling exhaustion and bored 9 yr. olds. So i simply ask you to accept it, errors and all, with a good heart. My eyes are closing as we speak, so i haven't even read over to see if it makes sense in all places. I probably will tomorrow night, and make changes if i need to, but if anyone out there notices HUGE errors, contradictions, just straight up screwed ideas, feel free to tell me. For all of you fans of the wardrobe, i'm trying to put it in a little more, without overusing it, bcuz after this chapter you probably won't see it again. Then again, who knows, I may throw it in randomly in the next chapters too. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy. I think i'm rambling so i am out for the night!

Chapter 5

Sarah spent most of the next morning fighting both her fashion sense and the wardrobe. First, she managed to talk the thing into some blue jeans and a T-shirt. This feat was accomplished after almost an hour of begging, pleading, threatening, and crying. When she was finally dressed, Sarah looked in the mirror to see how she looked. She would be meeting Jareth's wife today. She may seem comfortable with Jareth, but every now and then it hit her that he was a king. Elizabeth was a queen. Surely Sarah would be expected to dress up at least a little for lunch with such a figure.

However, when she asked the wardrobe for something a little dressier, she was confronted with the lacy ball-gowns, that she had evaded for the past week. The chaos resumed again and continued until just a few minutes before Jareth arrived to pick her up. Toby answered the door and led Jareth to their small sitting room.   
"I think Sarah is still wrestling with the wardrobe this morning," Toby told him brightly.

"Ah, I see," said Jareth. King though he was, he was not sure that he saw at all. "So young Toby" Jareth turned on him without further preamble, "How are you enjoying my castle?"

The ten year old met his fiery gaze easily. "Of course, Jareth. I'm enjoying it as much as I did last time." His voice dropped to a whisper as he said this last, so that Sarah wouldn't overhear.

Jareth gaped openmouthed for a moment. By the time he had recovered himself enough to speak, Sarah had joined them. He answered simply with, "I'm glad to hear that." He offered Sarah his arm and led her out the door and down the corridor.

Sarah was nervous about her eminent meeting with Elizabeth, which was just as well. Jareth wasn't speaking at all. His thoughts were on what Toby had just told him. Surely the boy couldn't remember. He hadn't yet learned to speak when he was here last. There was no fathomable way that the child would be able to remember something that had occurred when he was so very young.

Lunch with Elizabeth was a certifiable disaster. Elizabeth was courteous enough to Sarah, but other than the initial meeting, she ignored her entirely. She talked to no one but Jareth. Jareth, on the other hand, brushed off her comments easily, focusing mainly on Sarah. Sarah sat quietly drinking her tea.

She spoke only when spoken to, and sometimes not even then. She coul feel Elizabeth's annoyance at the fact that Jareth was paying attention to her, so she tried to look as if she didn't care when Jareth spoke to her. Truly, she felt that she only accomplished looking shy and stupid.

Elizabeth, however, was not a bad hostess. She seemed polite enough when Jareth escorted Sarah from her chambers, if a little miffed that Jareth didn't seem to be staying. "You will be attending the banquet tonight?" she asked as she showed them to the door.

"I plan to," said Sarah, hoping desperately that Elizabeth was not asking this hoping she would say no. "But I think I will not stay long. I am not over fond of ballroom gowns, though I think appearing without one would probably be a bad idea."

"I understand," said Elizabeth smiling as Sarah, and Sarah was surprised but happy to see that she meant it. "I have lived in the castle for years," Elizabeth continued, "and I still have not come to love ballroom gowns or the wardrobes that insist I wear them."

"You lost, huh?" said Toby as Sarah entered the sitting room later that night, clothed in an efficiently ballroom worthy dress. Rather over efficent thought Sarah to herself. She was trying to use her dress to blend in, not to stand out. Her dress was almost identical to the one she had worn in her daydream. Perhaps she called it almost identical only to convince herself that it was not the same dress.

Sarah slumped, carefully, into one of the very un-medieval armchairs that sat around the room. She knew that she was getting dressed to early, but didn't really care. She had taken long enough picking out a dress that she didn't think she would have to wait too very long before Jareth arrived. "Believe it or not, I chose to wear a dress tonight, but if I hadn't, then, yes, I probably would have lost."

Toby grinned widely, one of the few facial features they shared. Toby took after his mother, and Sarah her own, now long passed. However, their father had always had an easy grin that, when he felt it, radiated happiness. Sarah grinned back, but her grin was interrupted by the knock on the door. Toby thought she grinned rather wider because of it.

Jareth offered her his arm and led her down the corridor to a door Sarah had not noticed before. Elizabeth was nowhere in sight, although Sarah had suggested earlier that Jareth escort his wife to the banquet and allow her to be escorted by Hoggle, or maybe Sir Didymus. Jareth had pretended to think about it then, however Sarah now saw that he had acted that way only to get her to leave off. The stairway behind the door was also unfamiliar to Sarah.

"That's because it only exists when we need it to," Jareth had replied, laughing at her questions. The Staircase they walked down grew slowly in size until, quite suddenly, it was enormous grand staircase from a castle in a fairy tale. The ballroom opened at the foot of the staircase and Sarah's breath caught in her throat.

It was the ballroom from her dream. She knew she shouldn't be any more surprised by this than she had been by the fog that pulled her out of her house, but it still amazed her to see her dreams coming true in the literal sense. Thankfully, the people in this ballroom were not masked as they had been in her dream. Still, Sarah thought to herself, the fact that these people don't have masks does not mean that they were not the same people. The ballroom was converted into an eating area. The entire room was a series of steps with tables on them. There didn't seem to be an empty chair in sight, but Jareth led her to the highest step and showed her a single table with three places set for the meal.

Sarah sat on Jareth's right side while Elizabeth was seated on his left. Elizabeth's smile was warm enough when she greeted her as they were sitting down, but afterward she ignored Sarah almost completely. As soon as Jareth took his place between them, it became clear that dinner would be as awkward a meal as lunch had been.

Awkward it was. Sarah, trying to keep her mind off of the one-sided conversations and at the same time avoid taking interest in another woman's husband. The steps descending in front of them were filled with a wide variety of Jareth's subjects. Some of them she knew by name -- Toby, for example was sitting with Sir Didymus and Hoggle. Others she knew by face only, and still more she had never seen before.

She tried to focus on being fascinated by the fact that the food was serving itself, but was easily distracted by the flashes of upturned faces as the people below her turned around to look at their leader. It might simply have been her own paranoia, but they seemed to be waiting for him to say something, make an announcement of some kind. She half expected it herself, but as she had not yet been here a week, she thought maybe that the banquet was a weekly occurrence.

His people's uneasy expectance, however, was not disappointed. After most people had finished their meal, except, judging from the yells, a group of boys near the bottom step, Jareth stood and tapped his wine glass with his knife. It was a small tap. So small that Sarah could almost not hear it and she sat only inches from him. The small, clear, tinkling sound, however, instantly commanded the attention of all eyes in the room. Everyone instantly quieted and Sarah could hear Elizabeth's breathing from 5 feet away.

"Good evening!" said Jareth in his grand voice that Sarah was ashamed to admit she loved. She had the feeling he could say the silliest thing in the world, like "Boogers!" or "Take that wardrobe to the dungeon!" and still make it sound profound and important.

There was a rumble of reply from his subjects, but i died out quickly. Obviously, a greeting was not what the people had been waiting for.

"The war draws on!" continued Jareth. "It nears 5 years, but, also, it nears its end! Tomorrow I and my army ride to confront and conquer Mordrim and his army. Our journey will be hindered by the Labyrinth, but we will return before a fortnight is over. We will return victorious!"

The applause, which had been deafening at the end of each of Jareth's statements, was now unbearable. Sarah had no doubt that every mouth was shouting and each hand joined another to clap. She put her head between her hands to stop the sound, but Jareth waved his hands in a violent gesture that instantly stopped all sounds.

"To celebrate, we dance!" he snapped his fingers, and Sarah witnessed dher first actual glimpse of Jareth's magic as all of the tables, food, and other debris of the banquet instantly vanished. The steps on which they stood slowly lowered into the ground and the room that had been impassable except by stairway became a ballroom with a large flat dancing floor large enough to rest a house upon.

"Shall we dance?" Jareth asked, turning to Sarah.

Sarah however looked meaningfully at a place to the right of Jareth's left shoulder where Elizabeth stood waiting for the question that Jareth obviously had no intention of asking. When Jareth failed to take the hint Sarah shook her head. "Thank you, but no. I'm feeling a little warm. Perhaps you should dance with Elizabeth. I will be on the balcony getting a breath of fresh air.

Jareth, left with no tactful way to drop Elizabeth and follow Sarah onto the balcony, took Elizabeth delicately and twirled her around the dance floor, perhaps farther away than he would have held Sarah.

As Sarah stepped out into the cool, wet, misty night air that took up the entire space of the balcony, Sarah knew that she wouldn't be able to go back into the ball. The wet night soaked her dress almost instantly, and the careful curls that had been arranged on top of her head fell down and hung limply at her back.

She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about the news that Jareth's army went to fight the war tomorrow. For one thing, she was ready to be home, and the only promise she had made was to help end the war as soon as possible. Once the war was over, she would be able to return, she and Toby both. It wasn't that she didn't want to go home. She did. But she felt as if there was something else that was supposed to happen. Something that wasn't finished, that had been unfinished since before they had come to the castle that lay beyond the Goblin City.

For another, she wasn't sure of how the war would end. Jareth seemed confident enough, out there in front of his people, proclaiming his greatness, and easily ignoring important things like his queen. However, Sarah could see that Jareth's eyes lost some of their twinkle when he said they would win. He blinked alot more then, like he was lying.

She sighed in exasperation at her inability to organize her own thoughts. The sigh was loud in her own ears, and maybe it was then that she missed Jareth's entrance onto the balcony. As always, the humidity and moisture missed Jareth. The atmosphere in which he stood was the same as Sarah's, but while Sarah's hair was now weighing her down it weighed so much when wet, Jareth's own hair was as dry as it had been when he'd given his war-rallying speech inside.

Jareth came to stand at Sarah's side as she looked out into the greyness beyond the balcony. She had, by now, learned to ignore his silence as he struggled not to put his arm around her shoulders. "Anticipating the journey tomorrow?" he asked her after deciding to leave his arm at his own side. A pity for him, she thought to herself. In such a melancholy mood, she might have permitted the intimacy.

"Kind of, not really. You're a big boy, Jareth. You can take care of yourself, I'm sure."

"Yes, but are you a big enough girl to cope with the war party."

Sarah looked at him sharply, startled. "I'm not going am I?"

"Of course," he told her. He used her tactical preoccupation with the mist swirling beneath them as he continued. "You swore to do what you could to help end the war. I'm not sure why, but I know that I need you to end the war. Without you, and Toby, we will lose, and what I do with Elizabeth will be irrelevant. We will all perish."

Jareth kept his face beautifully blank throughout this exchange. He did such a good job of pretending to ignore her that, when real anger entered her eyes, he failed to see it. She knew, without a doubt, that she would go with him, and do what she could to help him win the war. But it made her angry that he would assume she was going with him. True, she had promised to help him as best she could. However, how could he have known that she would agree that this was the best way she could be of help?

She wiped angry tears from her eyes, and stomped her foot in frustration at the layer of wetness that immediately covered her face. Jareth turned to look at her in what appeared to be mild surprise. "Is something wrong?"

Sarah bit back the remarks she longed to yell at him about giving her no choice but to accompany them on his reckless attack. Instead she yelled about the weather. "This stupid fog that coats your castle day in and day out. I can never tell if it's day or night or morning or dusk. There's no difference! And if that wasn't bad enough, you can't even go outside and enjoy the love swirls in the fog without being soaked to the bone in less that 30 seconds."

Jareth looked hurt. "I've already told you, Sarah. I do the best I can with my shields."

Sarah suddenly felt very ashamed of her outburst, and felt a bigger pain than she had at first for the lessening of Jareth's confidence when he spoke of victory. "I'm sorry. A little while to appreciate the view would be nice though. Surely, we will have to have the shield lowered to ride out tomorrow.

"Yes I suppose you''re right. I need to gather my strength as well. It is hard enough to hold up the shield. It will be harder still to hold it up from a distance. I guess, with guards, one shieldless night would not ruin everything." Jareth sighed deeply and, with a surprising brilliance, the stars shimmered into view.   
Sarah blinked in amazed surprise, and Jareth shivered as he saw the stars reflected in her eyes. "You won't dance with me will you? We don't have to go inside or anything, just right here on the balcony is enough."

It was hard to turn him down. Gone was the wetness of the night air and with it was an exhilarating chill. He looked nothing short of beautiful, waiting there with his arms outstretched for _her_. She couldn't help but know that she wanted to dance with him. However, she was a girl of morals, and this would never do. Stilling her breath, she tried to look as though she was not disappointed.

"No, Jareth. I won't dance with you. Go inside and dance with your wife."

"I've told you already: I don't love her."

"I know that. But that doesn't make her go away. You have commitments, Jareth. I have my own. I'll go with you tomorrow, and after we win, we will go home. Goodnight."

She turned to go, but Jareth's next words stopped her. They broke her heart because anger was not what she wanted him to feel, but more than anything they made her angry also. "You can't just walk away from me, you know? You can pretend you don't love me for whatever reasons you want to, but when I say bow you will _bow_."

"I will not bow! You can't make me. What makes you think I'm pretending to not love you? Think what you want, I will see you in the morning."

"Bow. Kneel. Curtsy. I said to. You have to. If I say to, it must be done. That is the power of a king over his people!" Childish arrogance dripped from his every word, fueling Sarah's own anger.

"Exactly, _your people_!!!" The color was high in her cheeks, and she could feel it rising. She took a calming breath and turned to go. Her breath shook when she spoke again, and Jareth had to listen closely since her back was turned and star-studded breezes snatched her words. "You have no power over me. I will not dance with you, Jareth. Good night."

Jareth tried for a moment to speak, tried to run after her and stop her, tried to tell her everything that everyone but she knew, but failed. A king does not cry, he reminded himself, wondering if a life with the woman he loved would require keeping his tears constantly in check. He wondered if Sarah was crying too and decided he didn't want to know. With each tear, his heart would break, but know that she wasn't crying would mean that she didn't care about him at all.

Life was weird like that.


End file.
